


fall asleep with me tonight

by korilove



Series: i wanna make love last [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, post eichen rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6955846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korilove/pseuds/korilove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles deals with his emotions after Lydia's rescue in Eichen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fall asleep with me tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writergirl8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/gifts).



> Just a quick thing to a) hopefully satisfy Rachel and her quench her thirst for this little canon-divergent universe and b) get me out of my funk for writing stydia.
> 
> you don't necessarily /have/ to read the first fic in this series to get the just of this, but it'll make more sense if you do!
> 
> title is from don't you wanna stay by jason aldean.
> 
> thanks to maggie for betaing this!

When it’s over, Stiles is equally relieved, and dumbfounded.

 

Relieved, because he’d been running on fumes since the plan had gone sideways at Eichen. His plan had actually worked, even with a few minor hiccups with guards and the card reader being replaced. And then everything had seemed like it’d been for nothing, because when he’d _finally_ gotten to Lydia, there was already a hole in her head.

 

He’d been too late.

 

It was written in the sweat on her forehead, the paleness of her face, the wet blood staining the drill on the table and the pillow beneath her head. Stiles hadn’t been able to save her from this awfulness, and she was going to die.

 

But that was a fleeting thought, because there was no way in hell she was going to die. Stiles would rather die than have that happen, and it certainly wasn’t going to on his watch, let alone with the rest of the pack there to back him.

 

_“Stiles, you can’t be here. You’re going to die if you stay”_

 

 _“It doesn’t matter, I am here.”_ He’d wanted to say, but the words got lost in the choked tension of his chest.

 

 _“I’m not leaving you here_ . _”_ Is what comes out instead. And he can’t, there’s no way he can leave her, with her eyes bulging and blood seeping out from her scalp. But Valack is coming and if he stays, he’ll be caught and then there really will be no way out of this.

 

So he does the next best thing, hiding out of sight as close as he can be until he has another opportunity. Which, as fate would have it, wouldn’t technically come since all hell broke loose. Of course Theo and his pack of misfit toys had to show up and ruin everything.

 

Sadly, he’d needed the bozo’s supernatural hearing to find her. And even though when they finally did find her, Lydia had somehow blown off most of Valack’s skull with her scream; his ears were ringing from the piercing shrill of her voice she tried to keep at bay the whole drive to the animal clinic _and_ he and Scott and possibly anyone else in the vicinity could have _died_ , all that mattered was her.

 

It was ludicrous that somehow he’d forgotten, somewhere down the line of the past year, how much Lydia meant something to him. Everything had been in an awkward stalemate of not quite friendship, tainted by a night of recklessness that had nearly ruined everything. Stiles had thought he’d been able to push everything he’d ever felt and wanted and _longed for_ about Lydia deep enough down that it could stay buried. But the moment she looks at him, in her mother’s arms and the desperation fading from her eyes, it all but bursts out from the shallow grave he’d dug in his heart.

 

So maybe it’s the fact that she may not be out of the woods yet, or the way his heart is aching in a very different way than he had when he and Malia had ended things; but either way, Stiles’s limbs act of their own accord when Natalie Martin’s car pulls out of the parking lot of the animal clinic, and he finds he’s steering the jeep to follow.

 

He pulls the jeep over a couple of houses back from Lydia’s house, enough that it’s not completely and overbearingly obvious that he’s there, and watches as what’s left of the Martin family finally go home.

 

Stiles waits until the lights inside have gone out before pulling the jeep up to the curb in front of the house. There’s an eerie calm pumping through his bloodstream, the chill of the night starting to settle into his bones without the heat of the jeep’s engine running. His flannel shirt and jeans aren’t thick enough to combat the cold even remotely, but the last thing Stiles wants is to be further than he can possibly be from Lydia.

 

He leans back in the driver’s seat and wills sleep to come, but his mind has other ideas. His thoughts flash through every moment he’s shared with Lydia since all of this began - being trapped by Peter in the high school, rushing to the pool where she’d found the first of the Darach’s sacrifices, her lips frantically pressing against his as his lungs struggle to take a breath, the searing heat of her tears seeping through his shirt in the tunnels of Oak Creek, every single time their hands found each other, the spatter of rain on the roof of the jeep and the feel of _Lydia_ consuming his every sense.

 

Now that Stiles has allowed himself to remember that night, the reality of how things could have gone hits him like a freight train. Lydia could have died in his arms directly behind where he’s sitting now. He could have willed her to wake up after her scream had shattered the windows for hours, only to have the piercing of his ears be the last sound anyone would ever hear her make. The enormity of how he would have never had the chance to see her smile; or argue with her about anything and everything, weighs heavily on his chest. And even though his body is straining with exhaustion, his mind and his heart refuse to give into the draw of sleep.

 

After a few hours of staring at Lydia’s bedroom window from the street, his phone buzzes with an incoming text. He’s not even all that surprised that it’s from Lydia.

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:27am_

_Hey_

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:27am_

_Let’s skip the part where you pretend you aren’t parked outside and I have to drag it out of you. I can see that piece of junk you call a car from my window._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:28am_

_Okay._

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:28am_

_Why are you still here? Sleeping in your jeep can’t exactly be comfortable._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:29am_

_Can’t sleep actually. Just wanna make sure you’re safe._

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:29am_

_Stiles, I am safe._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:30am_

_I know. I just wanna make sure._

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:30am_

_I mean it. I’m at home, the doors are locked and my mom is here. There’s no safer place to be._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:31am_

_That’s because i’m here, no way Theo or some idiot orderly is gonna get past me._

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:31am_

_Stiles, you don’t need to stay._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:32am_

_I know._

 

Lydia doesn’t reply for a few minutes, but Stiles just wants to keep talking to her. So he types out another message.

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:37am_

_You okay?_

 

_Lydia Martin - 3:38am_

_No._

 

_Stiles Stilinski - 3:38am_

_Me either._

 

When his phone buzzes this time, the screen dims and Lydia’s contact picture comes up to indicate she’s calling him.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Hey.”

 

She sounds so small, her voice quiet and barely there, even in the near silence of the jeep’s cab.

 

“Can’t sleep either?” He asks.

 

“No,” She sighs, and Stiles can hear muffled sounds from her end of the line, like she’s turning over on her bed to try to get comfortable. “The bed is too soft and everything’s so _quiet_.”

 

Stiles nods, even though she can’t see him. He just listens to her breathing through the speaker of his phone, waiting for her to say something else since anything he comes up with seems inappropriate or just wrong.

 

“Do you think maybe you could come up here?” She asks softly, her tone lilting up at bit at the end before her voice breaks a little.

 

“Yeah.” He says immediately.

 

“‘Kay,” She says before the call hangs up.

 

*

 

Stiles somehow manages to climb up the side of Lydia’s house with the help of eavestroughs and spikes in the brick holding up climbing plants that decorate the siding. Lydia’s left the window open for him, and it’s a miracle that the thump his body makes when it makes contact with the floor doesn’t wake up Lydia’s mom.

 

Once Stiles has scrambled up from where he'd landed, he can take in Lydia's appearance in the dim light. She's sitting on the end of her bed, her pajama-less legs tucked underneath one another. She’s wearing an over sized and thoroughly worn t-shirt from Stanford and her hair is falling out of the loose bun knotted on top of her head, obscuring the view of where Valack drilled a hole into her skull.

 

There are bags under her eyes, but she still looks undeniably awake through her obvious fatigue. Stiles toes off his shoes at the foot of her bed before taking a seat beside her. They don’t speak, mostly because Stiles refuses to break the fragile moment by saying something stupid.

 

“So why can’t you sleep?” Lydia asks after a while.

 

Stiles shrugs a bit before shifting to stretch out on the end of Lydia’s mattress. “Don’t know. I just keep going through everything that happened today and it’s like I still can’t process it, y’know?”

 

“Yeah,” Lydia nods, leaning over to lay down beside him. “So much happened and I’m not even sure if half of it is real.”

 

“Like what?”

 

Lydia tells him about being separated from her body after Theo used his claws on her; how she saw Meredith. Meredith’s story on how she busted out windows and injured classmates because she couldn’t control it’s blowback. How she'd predicted Malia’s death and how, with Meredith's help, it prompted her to project her scream outwards of herself but concentrated as a bullet.

 

“So now that we, you know,” He says, motioning to the right side of her head -  trying to indicate that Deaton had filled her head with mistletoe, and that that was _obviously_ an acceptable solution . “You can use your scream for protection instead of just to clear the noise and hear the voices?”

 

It’s Lydia’s turn to shrug. “I’m not sure. I would try it, but I’d rather not wake up the neighborhood when they already know I was committed.”

 

Stiles offers her a small smile, because he knows how it feels. Granted, his screams were never loud enough to be heard outside his house, and he’d only spent a night in Eichen.

 

“Do you feel different?”

 

Lydia purses her lips together. “No. I still hear everything like I did before.” She says, but Stiles can tell she’s keeping something else to herself.

 

“Lydia-”

 

“I just,” Lydia breaks her gaze downwards and away from him, her voice cracking. “I could have killed you. All of you.”

 

“But you didn’t.” Stiles wants to reach for her, to try and ease the pain she’s feeling. He can’t help but think about how she was the first one who’d touched him after Donovan. Guilt had coiled itself so tightly in his body that he’d barely felt human, and he wants so much to be the one to ease her of the same guilt like she’d done for him, but his body is cement on the plush mattress.

 

“I saw it. I heard it. I could _feel_ it Stiles. I was going to scream again and we would have died. You and me and Scott and Deaton.” Her words are watery now, and the sound of tears threatening to crest over gives Stiles the courage he needs to take her hand. It prompts her to look down at their hands - his resting on top of hers, even though she’s shaking slightly.

 

“God, Lydia. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t woken up.”

 

She searches his face, eyes darting all over to try and decipher some unspoken questions. “Why?” She whispers.

 

Stiles trails the tips of his fingers around her wrist, gently rubbing the soft skin where her hand and arm join. “I think we both know why.”

 

He hears her breath catch and it reminds him of that night all those months ago. How she’d stopped breathing before he’d taken her face in his hands and kissed her like his life depended on it. And even now, it feels like it does. He’s never stopped loving her, even when he tried so hard not to. It was impossible, just a simple fact in his core.

 

“Fuck, I just-” He breaks off, feeling her pulse through the thin skin over her veins. He needs to know it’s real, that he’s actually here, that she’s real, that she’s alive.

 

Lydia draws her arm upwards then, as if she somehow understands exactly what he can’t say. She presses his first two fingers to the pulse point in her neck. Her heartbeat thumps steadily - if not a little wildly - there, and Stiles feels an edge of his desperation melt away. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” She whispers.

 

Her eyes don’t leave his, and he feels exposed, everything about him and her intensified in something so simple as touch and looks. Lydia releases his hand but he doesn’t drop his fingers from the base of her neck, unwilling to break contact.

 

God, he’s in love with her.

 

Lydia reaches out, her hands falling onto his hip where his shirt has apparently ridden up. It’s different than the last time she’d touched him there. That had been bruising and predatory, grabbling for purchase before he’d sunk into her and animal instinct had taken over. This is a different kind of desperation, a need to satisfy another sort of recklessness than their tryst in the rain. This just feels like truth.

 

Stiles doesn’t want it to end.

 

“I thought we’d ruined this when we slept together.” Lydia murmurs, her fingers trailing up his side.

 

Stiles leans his forehead against hers, needing to somehow be even closer to her without overwhelming her. He can feel her breathing even out a bit and she closes her eyes.

 

“So did I.”

 

And then one of them leans close enough for their lips to touch - Stiles honestly can't tell if it was him or Lydia - and their mouths press together, softly and tentatively. It’s a ghost of a kiss, hardly there and for only a moment, but it leaves him breathless. Stiles can’t bring himself to open his eyes, getting lost in how careful he finds he needs to be with her. Something clicks deep down inside him, righting itself and swelling in his expanding chest.

 

They spend the rest of the night like that, curled up beside each other, not even bothering to get into the bed properly. Their hands memorize each other’s skin - Lydia’s run along his back and shoulders, and his trace indiscernible patterns into the back of her neck, tangling in the stray hairs from  where they've fallen out of her hair tie. They just _feel_ and listen to the quiet rhythm of their shared breathing until both of them drift off, limbs tangled together in a web as sleep finally claims them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr [here](http://savingsciles.tumblr.com)


End file.
